Or, rather, I get mail. I don’t know why I said, “we” – perhaps I’m feeling rather queenlike tonight.
I get a lot of mail. A LOT of mail. I try to answer each piece completely (not just a “Hey, thanks for writing!” but something more substantial) It’s not always possible, but I try.
Today I got a letter asking me to work up the corset as a crochet pattern (good idea), asking me to explain combination knitting (I directed them to the website). I got two letters asking me to explain stitches from patterns by other designers (wha?) but the stitches were pretty easy to explain. I received several letters from someone who wants to order lots of “my products” for a client in Nigera. It sounds like a great business proposition, but it may not matter because according to another email, I’m rich (I won the lottery – please don’t be jealous!)
I also got an email from someone who’s making a pattern that was published in a magazine a few years ago – she wasn’t very happy with me because apparently when the magazine extrapolated the yardage required down to the smaller sizes and up to the larger sizes, the amounts didn’t jive with what she ended up using.
This isn’t an uncommon problem – it’s VERY hard to figure yarn estimates. She wasn’t happy, though. She had to buy more balls than she’d originally budgeted for.
I wouldn’t be happy, either (but I don’t think I’d send an email that was – well – not nice. Or maybe I would. Who knows? Never say never!) For the record – designers usually don’t figure the yardages in magazines, we tell them how much yarn we used in the sample and the magazines figure the yardages for the other sizes.
Ironically, last week I got a letter from another woman about the exact same pattern, except this woman was really upset because she bought exactly the yardage listed in the pattern (same size as my friend who wrote today) and she had several balls left over.
Friends, we all knit differently – sometimes Helen may use a lot more yarn than Brenda, even though they bought the same pattern and are using the same needle size. Don’t ask my why, I don’t entirely understand the yardage black hole. I know that the discrepancies tend to pop up more frequently with novelty yarns.
I’d like to hook these ladies up – maybe they could share the leftovers – but I’m sure there’d be dye lot problems …
… and I just couldn’t handle the guilt.